Showing posts with label dining room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dining room. Show all posts

Summer Cottage Style Faux Fireplace



Hello, friends!  First of all, just a note to let you know that I'm having so many annoying issues with my new Wordpress blog  {loading slowly, interface troubles, etc., etc.} that I've decided to just to keep blogging  HERE with Blogger right now. I don't know if I'll ever get my Wordpress problems worked out, and frankly, I don't have time to work on them. I don't want you to have to deal with slow loading pages and images, so excuse my crazy while I tell you that I'll be continuing to update here instead of at the new site until further notice.

So, do you remember forever ago when our dining room looked like this?  It was when we first moved into the house and I was really into jewel tones.  The photo Perhaps in the fall we'll draw ourselves a roaring chalk firebelow was pre-remodel.  Just a standard little dining space with a door to the laundry room right in the middle of it!  That door was quite silly, especially considering the fact that there was another door to the laundry room in the hallway.  So we decided to wall the dining room access door up....


and build a faux fireplace in it's place.  This wall really needed to be weighted with something that would visually balance out the red cabinets on the the opposite end of the room. A fireplace was the perfect solution.  We started with a mantel I found on clearance at Lowes...


and just began building a beefy box frame out of pine boards of various widths.


Somewhere along the line, I found this old black cast iron surround at an antique shop for about $30.  I was hoping it would somehow work with our faux mantel.


And it did!  Since I wanted to make the fireplace look as realistic as possible, I painted the inside of the surround with black chalkboard paint. {Perhaps in the fall we'll draw ourselves a roaring chalk fire.} And to keep a light & airy, vacation-ey beach feel, I painted the cast iron surround white.


I just love how substantial the vertical 'legs' of  the fireplace appear.  We just kept building up and layering boards and trim pieces until we got the look we wanted.



The area around the surround is actually heavy textured paintable wallpaper that looks like tin.  Convincing, yes?  The color I chose is called 'Malted Milk'... it reminds me of sand. ;) {You may notice a gap or two at the bottom near the floor - our floor is terribly uneven in this area and we'll have to fill it in somehow the future.  I had kind of forgotten about it until seeing these photos!}


Isn't it funny how a  fake fireplace can really warm up a summer style cottage dining room?


P.S.  I made the little banner for a party for my girls recently... I haven't had the heart to take it down yet. ;)

20 comments





Dining Room Painted Beadboard and Faux Fireplace



You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness.- Lewis Carroll


Don't you just love that Alice in Wonderland quote? For me personally, I couldn't think of anyone I could ever apply it to but myself and my blogging habits! Yes, I use to be much more "muchier" with blog posting, to be sure! Yet despite that fact, here you are. Thank you, dear readers, for visiting and checking in - year after year for some of you- on the progress we're making on our little fixer upper. Your encouragement and kind words are great motivators for us - and I wish you could know just how much!

Today I was snapping a photo of a small item on the fireplace mantle we built in the dining room a few months back. You may remember when I blogged about adding the faux fireplace and beadboard to the dining room and kitchen. Anyway, it occurred to me that I haven't yet shown you what the fireplace and beadboard looks like painted. Yes, it's true... we're just now getting around to painting though all the beadboard in the kitchen, dining, and living room has been primed for a while now. Let me tell you, pure white paint is just as hard to cover as red paint... it's taking us four coats, even with primer! So a slow job, but I'm pleased with the results far.

You will notice that I've carefully cropped these new progress photos. I'm working on a huge project on the dining room table in the center of the room and I'm sure you don't want to see the mess. But hopefully you can get a good idea of the direction we're headed with not only the dining and kitchen, but with the entire house. Only the bedrooms and bathrooms don't yet have beadboard, but they will when we get around to them.

First a before. This is how our dining room looked when we first moved in. Well, after we first moved in and I painted the room a deep red, that is!



You see in the next progress photo that we added a big window and removed a door to the laundry room. There were two entrances to our tiny laundry room {which, incidentally, use to be the kitchen!} We only needed one door to access the laundry, so we walled up one entryway and added the faux fireplace.



Now this is what the dining area looks like currently. White, white, white with beadboard aplenty!







We still need to finish the fireplace inset. Haven't yet decided exactly what to do with it, but there will be something.



If you would like to see a basic tutorial on the beadboard and trim we added to the dining, kitchen, and living room, please check out this past blog entry. Very easy and relatively cheap!

As for the "mess' on the dining room, well, I suppose it's the best kind of mess one can have. I'm working on making fondant flowers for some floral cupcakes. So much fun! I'm sure I'll have photos of them later, so stay tuned. :)



Speaking of "staying tuned", I'll have one of my Cottage Charm Giveaways posted this weekend. {I have TWO, the other to be posted next week!} I really wanted to have it posted this week, but little did I know how crazy things would be! For one thing, one of my daughters has to perform in both a play and a dance recital on Thursday night {tonight, depending on when you're reading this}. And you would know we all had dental appointments for the same day, which I promptly rescheduled. Of course, I would get a cold bug this week as well! Perhaps not with with blogging, but with l.i.f.e, I guess this is as "muchier" as it gets!

The giveaways posted so far by everyone are absolutely stunning! What participation we have in the first four days! I *hope* to have at least as many giveaways as last year {68} but wouldn't we all love to have more? Keep them them coming! For newcomers, please check out the 5th Annual Cottage Charm Giveaway event. You'll be glad you did!

14 comments





Winter Landing Places



I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage. - Jane Austen


When you're always shuffling things around because of a cottage transformation in progress, sometimes, by chance, things seem to land "prettily" on any convenient available surface...





...and some things are quite purposely put in their own special spot for a little extra cottage charm {or for a winter break cupcake party}...




But when you have children that are home on Snow Day #3, there are other things that also land on any convenient available surface...but not quite so prettily.


You too?

10 comments





Basic Farmhouse / Cottage Style Trim and Beadboard Tutorial



Happy Monday morning, everyone! I hope you had a beautiful fall weekend! I don't know about you, but we had to turn the heat on for the first time this morning. The weather is delicious!

Just a quick note before our beadboard update: All of the blog sale packages were mailed out on Saturday with the exception of four - I ran out of bubble wrap and packaging supplies over the weekend but am all stocked up now. I'll package those up today and mail them out tomorrow. Thanks again for all the blog sale support...I never imagined that I would find new homes for so many of my items!

Slowly but surely, beadboard and trim work progress continues here. Many of you have asked "How does your beadboard look all painted white now?". {insert awkward pause with crickets chirping in the background} Hmmm, well, we haven't gotten to that part yet because we are having to do the work in phases - first the baseboards,

I thought I would walk you through the steps we are taking to achieve the farmhouse style trim I've dreamt of having for so long. It really is simple, simple, simple.
beadboard, and beadboard caps, then the finishing trim. Shoe moulding will come last. It has taken us a while to accumulate the trim work for the kitchen, dining area, living room, foyer, and hallway {and we aren't finished "accumulating" yet!}, so as we get it, we install it. And of course, all of that has to be done before painting can start in earnest. It is an exercise in patience, to say the least, but so is this entire remodel. :)

I thought I would walk you through the steps we are taking to achieve the farmhouse style trim I've dreamt of having for so long. It really is simple, simple, simple. You'll need the 6 different elements I mentioned above: baseboards {pine boards, almost 6 inches wide}, beadboard {we use real wood beadboard panels because I love it's texture and hardiness}, a beadboard cap {again, just the same wide pine trim that we used as a baseboard}, finishing trim that goes right under the beadboard cap, finishing trip that goes right on or above the beadboard cap, and finally, shoe moulding {we haven't gotten to the shoe moulding yet, so I have no photos of this step.}

First we installed the baseboard. Again, just simple wide pine boards. You can go even wider than what we used. You can see that our floors aren't even so this is why it is extremely important to use a level when installing your beadboard. Otherwise everything will look very wonky by the time you are finished. Don't worry about gaps. Those will be covered by shoe moulding and finishing trim.


Then we put up the beadboard panels. The beadboard panels are sold in 4'W x 8'L sheets. We simply cut them in half so that our beadboard was 4'. I wanted the beadboard to be taller, but it was cheaper to go with 4' beadboard panels and then just have wider baseboards and baseboard caps to achieve the height that I was looking for. This added almost another foot to the beadboard height.


The next step was to install the beadboard cap, the piece that sits right above the beadboard. The cap is exactly the same pine that we used for the baseboards, but you can choose narrower or wider pieces if you prefer.


Normally, we would work our way around the room, but with the living room, we had to skip the wall that our fireplace is on since we will be rebuilding the mantel. It will be taller and chunkier {like the new dining room mantel we built a few months back} and really would have to be done before any beadboard goes on that wall. So we moved on to the window wall, saving the fireplace wall for another time.



Now to fancy that flat beadboard cap up a bit with some finishing trim! We haven't gotten to most of the living room finishing trim yet but we have started on the hallway and foyer, and as of this weekend, have completed the finishing trim in the kitchen and dining room. As you can see from this photo, it is installed first right under the baseboard cap. This will cover any unsightly gaps between the beadboard and the cap, too. Try to choose finishing trim that has a nice contour so as to add some interest and to soften the chunkiness of the beadboard cap. You can also add this at the bottom right above the baseboard, but we didn't so as to save a little money.




Next, we added more finishing trim right on the face of the beadboard cap. Again, we chose a different trim that had a nice contour. These are a few photos of the work we did in the kitchen/dining area this weekend.





The last step would be the shoe moulding, which we will be a future project for us. But what did I tell you...Simple, simple, simple!

I will be up to my eyeballs in more puttying and sanding in the kitchen/dining room, followed by caulking before we can paint. For now, I'm putting that part of the kitchen remodel on hold for a few weeks while I work on my shop and building inventory. Yep, I kind of feel like I'm losing my mind with so much going on at once, but I've figured out that things may just never "settle down" and I'm just going to have to get use to living and working in my little cottage circus environment! How do you balance everything?

Thanks for dropping by today and have have a lovely week!

25 comments





Weekly Words to Live By




{A little info on the photo above: The Goodwill chalkboard that was once blue...I sprayed the whole thing with chalkboard paint. It's a great little place to display inspirational messages and a perfect size for our dining room mantel. I love the little birds at the top and the nest at the bottom! The little silver piece I picked up at the Nashville Flea market a couple of weeks ago, and the shadow box with the antiqued silverware I bought half off {for $12} at Hobby Lobby yesterday...I've had my eye on that piece for a while now! I'll have to do a separate post at some point on the map of France in the background. It's almost 160 years old and was a great Ebay find for less than $30! The straw hat, which you see in many of my posts, I got a while back at Goodwill. I collect vintage looking straw hats...they are a weakness!}

I'm joining Tracey @ Notes from a Cottage Industry for her Weekly Words to Live By and Cindy @ Cottage Instincts for Make it For Monday and Rhoda @ Southern Hospitality for Today's Thrifty Treasures

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